Blogger's Crappiness Parallels Kerry Wood's

I swear by all that is holy that I'm this close to moving to another blogging service. Blogger's lengthy delays, repeated error messages, failure to save posts, and failure to re-publish are just infuriating. I've been forced to pre-write all blog entries in Notepad because I have absolutely no confidence that, when I click the "Publish" button, my hard work won't be forever and irretrievably lost in cyberspace. WordPress remains a possible alternative.

Anyway... last night, Renaissance Man "Magic" Wandy Rodriguez showed Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel how to pitch on short rest, tossing seven innings of shutout ball. Alas, the Mole ruined the shutout in the ninth inning, having coughed up a run-scoring double to the mighty John Mabry. (I bet that's the first time that "mighty" and "John Mabry" have appeared in the same sentence.) Mabry's "offensive" statistics now measure at .194/.280/.254; last night's double was only his second extra-base hit in forty games (67 AB's) this year so far.

The Astros' new whipping boy served up seven hits and four runs in only 3 2/3 innings which, according to ESPN, was his "shortest start of the season." That's not that impressive of a comment given that this was only his fourth start. Oh, and get this: Wood's already suffering from stiffness in his surgically-"repaired" shoulder.

It says here that Wood is not making it through the season without another lengthy stop-off on the DL, although one need not be Nostradamus to make such an obvious prediction. He's now listed as Day-to-Day. As to whether Wood was rushed back too soon, Lance Berkman--who homered last night, while managing not to pass gas on Shafty and Phat-C, offered the following:

"I'm not sure if Kerry was pitching 100 percent," Berkman said. "I think he was in pain. I'm used to seeing him pitching around 96 or 97 [mph] and tonight he was around 90-91."

As Phat-C already noted, Roy Oswalt is now on the DL with back spasms. Taking his place is former Rice starter, lefty Phillip Barzilla. Not considered to be a big-time prospect, Barzilla converted from starter to reliever a few years back. At the time of his call-up to the bigs, Barzilla was 2-3 with a 4.13 ERA and 1.48 WHIP in AAA. He's exhibited some wildness, having walked 25 batters in only 48 innings. Strikeout-to-walk ratio is roughly 1.5:1. Perhaps Barzilla will be our latest attempt at having a "left-handed specialist," although he's probably viewed more as just a stopgap solution until Roy-O or Clemens are ready to go.

Speaking of Clemens, nearly everybody's seen or heard that some A kid got ahold of one of his split-finger fastballs and drove it into the seats in the first inning. Kudos to Johnny Drennen, who is only one of 13 hitters (including Manny Ramirez) to homer off Clemens in their first meeting, for putting his head down and sprinting around the bases after going yard. Perhaps Drennen had heard the story of what happened to the last snot-nosed kid who took Clemens deep?

I'm off to Game 3 today, and will report later on Chris Sampson's efforts to bring the local boys a rare series win.